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Category Archives: Home Tour

As previously discussed, my home is a work in progress (let’s be real here – everyone’s home is a work in progress). Over the past few months I have been working on making my living room a little more liveable. Lets all remember where we started:

Gahh. So naked.

And now:

I have been shopping my house and combined with a few new items and some rearranging, this room is looking a little less drab and a lot more fab.

We have been ‘looking’ for a coffee table since we moved in – by looking I mean casually looked and didn’t buy anything for 0ver 3 years. So when we found this coffee table from Urban Barn we decided to take the plunge. It was more expensive than I wanted (although still reasonable) but it was the only one my husband and I could agree on.

This painting is one of my most prized possessions – it’s an Alex Janvier original that was gifted to my husband and I from my parents at our wedding. It’s title is ‘Love Lines’.

This area rug was a new acquisition from Homesense – I wanted an 8’x10′ for the space, but I was having a hard time procuring one (that I liked) in my tiny $200-$300 budget. When I saw this one I thought it would coordinate well being neutral, but that it would also bring some dimension with the Ikat pattern. And yes, I do see that there are some doggy crunches on the floor next to it, thats a regular occurrence in this house (and I am going to generalize here but I think its a regular occurrence to most people with doggies).

We had the floral chairs in the living room before, but when we bought the carpet I though that there were maybe too many different patterns happening and that they were a little too pretty for the space, so I pulled the floral chairs to the kitchen and pulled two dining chairs to the living room. I think it was a good move.

Yes, that is a self portrait of my husband and I hanging behind out TV. It was a recent gift from my brother (who magically found an amazing local portrait painter here in Edmonton on Kijiji – and I regret to inform that I don’t know who it is!). We haven’t decided where it will live forever, but because its so funny we decided to hang it right there for now (full disclosure, there were some existing screws in the wall from when I moved the TV to that location, the frame behind it was too large and hidden so we moved it to another spot, and left that one naked – self portrait to the rescue!).

My poor husband had to lose his hair for this portrait, but the likeness is amazing.

Yes, that is a lounge chair in my living room. Don’t ask, it’s not permanent.

I am pretty happy with its current state. Of course I have a long list of things that I want to change (new chairs, new couch with chaise lounge, lounge chair back to the basement, new window coverings etc.) but with spending just over $1100 my living room almost looks new.

When we first moved into our house (3.5 years ago) our cousins gave us these brown things (they were going to put them up on their walls but they didn’t like them very much, so they came to us). I’m not going to lie, I didn’t love them either – brown and just kind-of weird-looking, they weren’t going to work in our house. That’s why they sat in our basement for 3 years. I told myself that it was an easy project, but that didn’t stop my from ignoring them for an exceptionally long time. In my effort to create a better looking living room, I decided it was time.

Guess what I did to them… I sprayed them glossy black. How original, I know. BUT I think it made them look a hell of a lot better.

My trusty purple painting blanket to the rescue. I always try to elevate whatever I’m spraying to avoid a number of different issues, usually with whatever I have sitting (aka can find within 1 minute) around my garage/house.

On a completely different note: Look how beautiful my grass looks!

I just used the least expensive (a nicer way of saying cheapest) black paint I could find at Home Depot. This one sufficed.

Once they dried, I decided to hang them on either side of the large window in my living room for symmetry.

I used (and by I, I actually mean my trophy husband – thank god for men who are handy) my absolute favourite trick to hang these – 3M Command Hooks for no holes and if I want to move them I don’t feel guilty about having leftover nails/holes in the walls. I posted about them earlier – you can read all about that here.

The last stop on my home tour is one of my favourite rooms in our house, but also one of my least favourite. We spend so much time in our living room relaxing after work, playing with our pups, having coffee with our friends and family, but has been the most neglected room design-wize. I would buy things for my bedroom or guest room, show my bestie (who has a keen design eye) who would then state “Your living room told me it is feeling left out”. This is the room that I absolutely need to pay attention to and this year it WILL get the attention it deserves. See below:

Yup – there is NOTHING on the walls. Terrible, I know. No coffee table, no area rug, nothing on the walls – its screaming at me SAVE ME!

I got the TV console right around Christmas this year and THANK GOD. We had a super big and bulky thing there for almost 3 years, and for all those 3 years I despised it. I kept looking for something smaller, lower, less deep with legs. I wanted it to feel lighter, and this console did the trick.

Yes, that is a hot pink dog dish under the table.

I read somewhere that everyone should have a buddha in their home, so when I found this glossy white guy, I knew he was perfect for our home.

I am kinda loving the way the bokeh occurred in these pictures – don’t ask, I have no idea how I made this happen.

The stairs leading up has to be one of my favourite spaces in our home right now. First of all, I have a gallery wall started with black and white photographs of friends and family. And second of all, it features an original painting that my mom made for me. It is so beautiful. She is a very talented artist and her main medium is water-colour.

I love this painting so much. It used to live in my dining nook, but there is a south facing window that brought in gorgeous natural light in directly onto this piece. I was worried that it would fade the painting, so it was moved into the stairwell – further away from any windows (which are north facing) which I hope will help to preserve it.

My mom gifted my trophy husband and I an amazing Alex Janvier ORIGINAL piece as a wedding present. Alex Janvier is one of my absolute favourite artists AND who I got the meet a little over a year ago so I was super giddy and excited to receive it but for the longest time I didn’t know where I wanted to put it. But I have decided that I am going to have it framed very soon, and that it will be living in our living room – stay tuned for updates!

The third stop on my home tour is my lovely kitchen/dining area. It’s technically two spaces but they work together as one, and although I am aware that it is still lacking some good design, this is where it sits today:

This tea towel was a perfect Christmas gift from my mother in law. I have made a ‘no use’ rule for this one – kinda defeats the purpose but I want it to stay pretty…

We had the carrara marble backsplash installed after we took possession and I am so pleased with the outcome. When we were building, I knew that I wanted white cabinets, the dark blue granite and carrara marble for the backsplash. But the builder didn’t allow very many selections and carrara was NOT one of them. So we took possession of the house with granite counter tops and just drywall backsplash. If you have ever seen it, its unattractive. The granite/wall are never perfectly matched and there can be medium to large gaps between the two. After a while we ordered up the marble and hired an installer and within a few hours the backsplash was complete, and beautiful.

My fur-babies were floating around when I was taking pictures, and this little peanut was too cute to ignore. She actually wanted to go outside and was patiently waiting by the door.

Angel.

Across the island is the dining nook. Not overly huge, but big enough to hold a table and maybe a small table on the wall opposite the window.

I fell in love with the Laura Ashley curtains that I found at Homesense, but I had an issue. They were short, and narrow (84″x55″). I needed 95″x110″. They looked so so bad by themselves, and for about a month I searched every Homesense around Edmonton and could not find another set. In the meantime I took the hem out so that I could add a little length. So I had to come up with a solution. My solution was Ikea. I bought a pair that coordinated, hemmed them to the same length as my Laura Ashley panels and hung them. And it made such a difference.

I bought this mirror for this specific location but its WAAAAYYY too small. I left it off the wall for a long time which left the wall naked. But I really didn’t like how naked the wall was, so I put it back up. It will get moved up into my master bedroom as soon as I find something similar but larger. But it is so pretty – another one of those amazing Target deals – I think I paid like $35 for it.

I found this adorable coat hook at Homesense as well. My husband is very outdoorsy/major hunter, so I knew he would love it. Plus its cute!

Our home is fairly small by today’s standards at about 1400 square feet. This means that we need to be creative in how we use the spaces that we are given. Our home consists of 3 bedrooms upstairs with 2 bathrooms, and kitchen, dining, living room and half bath on the main floor. Our spare bedroom also functions as our office space until we can create an effective space in our last available room. But for now our guests must share with our computer.

Remember how it started about a year ago? BORING

Well after some adjustments, this is how it sits today:

I saw this pillow at Homesense one day and knew it had to come home with me – its floral so obviously I had to have it. But its also feather filled and I have vowed to myself never to buy another poly filled pillow ever again. Because in my house we actually use our pillows, and they need to be fluffable (not a real word? I don’t care).

Cutest mouse pad ever thanks to Costco!

I bought the Ikea Leirvik bed for this room to get the mattress off the floor, and I liked that it isn’t too visually heavy for a smaller room. I have always been wary of buying an Ikea bed frame only because I feel like they don’t have the quality for long term use, but because its just a guest bed, I figured that it would hold up.

I love this little carpet so much and for so many reasons. First of all, I love anything floral. Secondly, the colours are so beautiful, totally my style. And most of all, my mom came home with this little carpet for me when she helped clean out my grandmothers old farmhouse. So I think of my lovely grandma Jenkins every time I get to come into here. And isn’t that the whole point of design? To have an emotional reaction to your spaces – to absolutely love what you surround yourself with?

There are some obvious adjustments that still need to be made – the biggest of course is blinds and curtain panels, but the list goes on… (dresser, paint the room, new bedding, art for the long empty wall that I intentionally left out, hang the mirror on the wall, get a night stand for that side of the bed and then move the office area into the other room once I actually make a plan for that specific room). We will see how far I actually get.

I have been wanting to do a home tour for a while now, but I have been waiting for my house to be ‘finished’. But I realized that waiting for my house to look ‘finished’ means that it would have never happened. We have been living in this house for three years now and there are still some items that have not been completed. I am not the type to buy something just to fill a wall – I prefer to wait to find something that I love so that I am completely happy and so that I won’t want to switch it out in a year and a half. At the same time, I do like to mix things up, and often times I will buy something for one room, only to pull it to another room in a few months.

So here is my master bedroom in all its current glory:

I think it is very pretty, but that it still does need some work. The only thing hanging on any of the walls right now is the large vivid painting above the bed. I have a few different pieces on the ground resting against the wall in anticipation that it might get hung.

My long list of changes involve but are not limited to: changing curtains, installing blinds, get a bed frame (this one is major – thats why its in bold), new dressers, hang art on the long wall next to the trophy husbands side of the bed, hang mirror above my current vanity.